The notorious Cabinet and political crisis of which so much
has been written in the press, poses more profound questions than the
liberals, who are making the most noise about it, think. They say that the
crisis confronts us with the problem of violation of the
Constitution. Actually what the crisis confronts us with is the Cadets’ and
the Octobrists’ mistaken conception of the Constitution, the profound
delusion entertained on that score by the two parties. The more widespread
this delusion becomes the more insistently must we explain it. The more the
Cadets try to use their accusations against the Octobrists as a means of
peddling their wrong ideas about the allegedly “constitutional” character
of the crisis, ideas common to the Octobrists and the Cadets, the more
important it is to explain this community of ideas now being revealed.

Let us take the recent reflections of Rech and Russkiye
Vedomosti on the slogan for the elections to the Fourth Duma. For or
against the Constitution—that, say the two main Cadet publications, is
how the question is being and will continue to be presented.

Now take a look at the reasoning of the Octobrists. Here is a typical
article by Mr. Gromoboi in Golos Moskvy for March 30. It is
entitled “A Disturbed Ant-Hill”. The Octobrist publicist tries to
persuade those, in his opinion, conscientious defenders of Mr. Stolypin who
“fear the idea of joining the opposition” by proving to them “that they
are taking the wrong steps”. “To a constitutionalist,” exclaims
Mr. Gromoboi, “there can be no graver sin than the violation of the
Constitution.” What can be said on the essence of the matter? asks
Mr. Gromoboi; and answering, says:

Again the flintlock, nationalism, volitional impulses,
state necessity? Alas, we have heard all that before, and we have also
heard promises that were not justified.”

To the Octobrists (and to the Vekhi writers who under stood
most deeply and expressed most vividly the spirit of Cadetism) Stolypin’s
policy was an attractive “promise”. This “promise”, the Octobrists
confess, was not justified.

Actually, Stolypin’s policy was not a promise, but has been the stark
political and economic reality of Russian life in the last four (or even
five) years. Both June 3, 1907, and November 9, 1906 (June 14, 1910), were
not promises but reality. This reality has been put over and enforced by
the representatives of the big landowning nobility and of the élite
of the merchant and industrial capitalists, organised on a national
scale. When today the spokesman of the Octobrist, Moscow (and,
consequently, the all-Russia) capitalists says—“they have not been
justified”—that sums up a definite phase of political history, a
definite system of attempts to satisfy, through the Third Duma, through
Stolypin’s agrarian policy, etc., the demands of the epoch, the demands of
Russia’s capitalist development. The Octobrist capitalists worked
conscientiously and assiduously, sparing nothing—not even their
pockets—to help these attempts; but now they are obliged to confess that
the promise has not justified itself.

Consequently, it is not a matter of broken promises, or of “violation
of the Constitution”—for it is ridiculous to dissociate March 14, 1911,
from June 3, 1907; the point is that the demands of the epoch cannot be
satisfied through what the Octobrists and the Cadets call the
“Constitution”.

The “Constitution” which gave the majority to the Cadets in the First
and Second Dumas could not satisfy the demands of the times, nor can these
be satisfied by the “Constitution” which made the Octobrists the decisive
party (in the Third Duma). When today the Octobrists say—“they have not
been justified”, the meaning of this confession, and of the crisis which
has extorted it, is that the constitutional illusions both of the Cadets
and of the Octobrists have again been shattered, this time finally and
completely.

The democratic movement jolted the old out of its groove. The Cadets
deprecated the “excesses” of the democratic movement and promised to
accomplish the new by peaceful, “constitutional” means. These hopes were
not justified. It was Mr. Stolypin who tackled the job of accomplishing the
new—but in such a way as to ensure that the changed forms would reinforce
the old, that the organisation of the diehard landowners and of the pillars
of capital would fortify the old, and that the substitution of private
ownership of land for the village commune would create a new stratum of
defenders of the old. For years the Octobrists, working hand in glove with
Mr. Stolypin, tried to bring this about, “unhampered by the menace” of
the democratic movement which for the time being had been suppressed.

What has been justified is the words of those who pointed out the
futility and harmfulness of constitutional illusions in epochs of rapid and
radical changes such as the early twentieth century in Russia.

The three years of the Third, Octobrist Duma, and of its Octobrist
“Constitution”, of the Octobrists’ “life of peace and love” with
Stolypin, have not vanished without leaving a trace: the country has made
further economic progress, and all and sundry “Right” political parties
have developed, grown, shown their worth (and have spent themselves).

The agrarian policy of the Third Duma has shown itself in
operation in most of the villages and in the most out-of-the-way parts
of Russia, where it has stirred up the discontent that had lain dormant for
centuries, unceremoniously revealing and accentuating the existing
antagonisms, emboldening the kulak and enlightening those at the other end
of the scale. The Third Duma has had its effect. And so have the first two
Dumas, which produced so many good, well-meaning, innocuous and impotent
wishes. The collapse of the constitutional illusions of the years 1906 to
1910, incomparably more pronounced, has been revealed within the shell of
the “constitutional” crisis of 1911.

In point of fact, both Cadets and Octobrists alike based their policy
on these illusions. They were the illusions of the liberal bourgeoisie, the
illusions of the Centre, and there is no essential difference between the
“Left” Centre (the
Cadets) and the “Right” Centre (the Octobrists), since, owing to
objective conditions, both were doomed to failure. The old has been jolted
out of its groove. But neither the Left nor the Right Centre has achieved
the new. Who is going to accomplish this inescapable and historically
inevitable new, and how, that is a moot question. The “constitutional”
crisis is significant because the Octobrists, the masters of the situation,
have admitted that this question is again an “open” one; they
have written “unjustified” across even their apparently most “valid”
aspirations, aspirations which are valid from the merchant’s point of view,
and are commercially sober and modest. The “constitutional” crisis is
significant because the experience of the Octobrists has revealed the
extreme narrowness, poverty and impotence of the Cadets’ catchword—who is
for the Constitution, and who is against it.

The democratic movement has shown this slogan to be inadequate. The
Octobrist movement has corroborated it by the experience of yet another
phase of Russian history. The Cadets will not succeed in dragging Russia
back to the former naïve constitutional illusions.

“The orthodox Octobrists,” writes Mr, Gromoboi, “are having a fit of
nerves; they declare that they will resign from the Bureau, and do not know
what to do about their fellow-constitutionalists. Their agitation is
unjustified. They should remain calm in the knowledge that truth is on
their side, and that this truth is so elementary, so universally
recognised, that it does not need a Copernicus or a Galileo to prove
it. They should go on calmly doing their duty—declare that unlawful
actions are unlawful, and without fail, making no compromises, reject the
unlawful law.”

That is an illusion, Mr. Gromoboi! You cannot dispense with “a
Copernicus and a Galileo”. Your own efforts have brought no
“justification”, you will not manage without them.

“When we contemplate this disturbed, teeming ant-hill—the servile
press, servile orators, servile deputies [and, you might add, Mr. Gromoboi:
the servile, slavish bourgeoisie]—we can only out of humanity pity them
and gently remind them that they can no longer serve P. A. Stolypin; they
can only cringe before him.”

But P. A. Stolypin is not unique—he is typical; he is not an isolated
individual, but is “hand in glove” with the Council of the United
Nobility. The Octobrists have tried to live in harmony with him under the
new conditions—under the conditions of a Duma, of a “Constitution”, of
the bourgeois policy of ruining the village commune à la
Tolmachov. And if they failed in the attempt, it is by no means Stolypin’s
fault.

“...After all, the entire strength of people’s representatives is
derived from their contact with the people; and if they [the Right
Octobrists] lose ... their ‘identity’ by the very fact that they are giving
such support [support to Stolypin and his violation of the Constitution],
what will they be worth then?”

So this is what we have come to! Octobrists speak of “contact with the
people” as the source of “strength of people’s representatives”! That is
really funny. But no more so than the Cadet speeches in the First and
Second Dumas about “contact with the people” alongside their speeches,
say, against local land committees. The words which sound funny when
uttered by Cadets and Octobrists are by no means funny in themselves; they
are significant. For—despite the intentions of those who utter these
words today—they express, once more, the collapse of constitutional
illusions—which is a useful by-product of the “constitutional” crisis.